The Reunion

by Michelle E Lowe

  “I think this lodge offers complimentary breakfast.” He took out a burlap sack from the rucksack. “We can load up on food for the road.”

  They went downstairs to the smell of croissants and bacon. Both Pierce and Taisia filled their plates with everything they could get, ignoring the other guests who stared peculiarly at the tall piles of grub on each of their dishes. They sat down and ate what they wanted and casually dumped the rest into the bag. Taisia was amused at how well Pierce did so. With bellies and a burlap bag full of food, the pair went to collect their horse.

  * * *

  Nona watched through the carriage window as the trees slowly passed by. She had stayed quiet throughout the two-day journey to Southampton, her stomach carrying a heavy stone of guilt and worry. When they first set off, she feared of being caught and taken back to prison. The fear had subsided, but her grief remained.

  A mother’s love for her children ran as thick as melted steel. It had been torturous having both her sons taken from her so unexpectedly, and then, just when one came back to her, she let him go.

  She began crying.

  “Nona?” Jasper said alarmingly, wrapping his arm around her.

  “We should not have allowed him to leave,” she blurted out in French.

  Her husband tightened his hold, drawing her closer to him.

  “He’s a grown man,” he reassured her soothingly. “And he is doing this for us.”

  “I don’t care about the money,” she cried out. “Our son has finally returned, and we sent him away!”

  “We didn’t send him off. He left of his own accord. Pierce will return in a week. Two, tops,” Jasper reminded her.

  “Unless he is captured,” Nona threw back at him. “We should not have agreed to meet him in England. We should regroup someplace safer, or, at least, have gone with him to the Netherlands.”

  A hand touched her knee. Through a hazy vision, blurred by tears, she saw Eilidh smiling at her. Nona’s skin turned to gooseflesh and a dense fog escaped her lips. The world remained bright and lush with spring. Outside, the landscape was green, the sky pure blue, but, within the carriage, color had turned to a drab pigment. Frost clutched the air, stealing the pleasant, warm season and turning it to winter. Everyone sat literally frozen in place. Nobody breathed or even blinked. Clover and Archie, seated to either side of Eilidh, stared at Nona with still, lifeless eyes embedded in motionless doll-like faces. Jasper’s arm stayed hooked around her, stiff and unmovable.

  No one moved expect Nona and Eilidh.

  “Mother Landcross,” Eilidh said in a mature voice that did not sound like hers. “Forgive the cold, for I thought it best to still everyone so you and I may speak privately.”

  Nona ceased her crying and drifted into a trancelike state as if this woman was using some sort of calming power over her. Perhaps she was.

  “Your son is fine,” she said to Nona as gently as a mother telling a bedtime story to her child. “Everything will be all right.”

  The fog of Nona’s breath slowed with her breathing. An odd sensation of rest came over Nona. Every word the young woman said felt like a soft pillow of reassurance. She could easily lay her head down and simply listen to her speak.

  Yet her logical thinking prompted her to ask, “How can you be so sure?”

  Eilidh’s face glowed in the hoary atmosphere.

  “Because it has to be,” Eilidh said sincerely.

  Nona felt linked to this person. There was a connection between them—Jasper, too. Nona saw it clearly when Eilidh looked at him fondly.

  “It does?” Nona whispered.

  The weight of sleepiness pressed upon her. Her head grew too heavy to hold up, and her eyelids became heavy drapes.

  “Yes,” Eilidh said. “Now rest. We’re almost there.”

  The world faded to black and Nona dreamt of days long past.

  * * *

  Pierce was over the moon having Taisia so close to him as they rode together on the same horse. His nervousness kept every muscle tense, though.

  “How far is the cemetery?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  This time he caught her words instead of letting them float mindlessly into the ether of his mind. “According to the map, it’s about a three-hour ride.”

  “You think we can figure out the clues without your mother?”

  “Hope so,” he said over his shoulder. “I reckon we’ll see, eh?”

  The sun hid behind a bumpy quilt of darkening clouds. An eerie chill climbed steadily up his spine as they approached the burial ground. Once they passed the gate, they were instantly surrounded by new and aged headstones. The cemetery was a gothic garden where mossy green statues of crying angels and other figures stood guard over their flock of the departed. In some areas, tombstones were crowded tightly around twisted trees. Crows cawed their ragged calls, announcing the visitors’ arrival.

  Taisia studied the black skull and crossbones sculptures set in the four corners of a fence that enclosed a small cluster of headstones before examining the vastness of their surroundings.

  “This graveyard is so large,” she observed. “It will take us hours to find the gravesite.”

  “My concern lies in what needs to be done once we do come across it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Pierce again looked over his shoulder. “Well, I doubt the clue is going to be pasted onto Granddad’s tombstone.”

  “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Aye,” he sighed, looking ahead again. “Inside the tomb where he rests, meaning we’ll have to dig the bloke up.”

  “Disgusting” she complained. “I’m not thinking that will be the case, though.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your grandfather has been deceased for many years, da?”

  “Aye.”

  “If he is buried, he has already become part of the earth.”

  It took him a moment before he understood. His grandfather’s body and the pine box he was buried in had long ago decomposed. If they did dig the man up, they’d only unearth bones and no paper clue.

  “Good thinking,” he complimented.

  “I’m just using common sense,” she rebuked.

  He gritted his teeth. He should have realized it, too. What the bloody hell was wrong with him? The way he acted as of late, it wouldn’t be surprising if she viewed him as some dumb buffoon who wouldn’t know how to cross the street on his own.

  “Perhaps the clue will be in a metal box buried at the gravesite,” Taisia offered.

  As they approached the mausoleums, Pierce rethought a tick.

  A tomb. Pierce, you idiot.

  The graveyard held many ancient dead, their markers aging along with the corpses. Pierce and Taisia checked the names on every mausoleum they passed that hadn’t yet been worn away.

  “Over there, Pierce.”

  He followed her finger to a mausoleum just ahead of them. “Joubert” was etched above the entrance.

  Pierce pulled on the reins. “Brilliant.”

  He dismounted and reached for Taisia in an offer to help her down. She instead leaped off the other side. He put his arms down sheepishly and led the horse to a fountain filled with murky rainwater.

  “Why was your grandfather buried here and not in France?” Taisia asked, standing by the mausoleum.

  “He moved here before he met Grandmother Fey,” Pierce explained, eyeing the padlock. “They never married, apparently. From what I was told, he wasn’t even part of the troupe, just some tosser who got Grandma pregnant.”

  “She must have liked him if she birthed two of his children.”

  “S’pose,” he agreed while searching.

  The padlock binding the chain around the mausoleum door handles was an iron piece, similar to a jail lock. He could jimmy it if only he had a dagger. He headed behind the building.

  “What are you doing?” Taisia asked.

  “Looking for a way to break the lock.” After a short time, he returned with a heav
y rock. “With a simple lock, there’s always a simple solution in getting it open,” he declared.

  He lifted the stone, ready to bring it down, when an icy tingle of suspicion ran up his spine. He turned and scouted the cemetery.

  “Do you see someone?”

  His urgent tone had Taisia suddenly on alert. She surveyed the area like a hawk searching for prey. He wondered about the quality of her eyesight, and if she could see well enough to spot anyone.

  “I see no one,” she stated.

  He didn’t, either. Perhaps he sensed a mourner. After all, who would have known they’d be out here?

  He shrugged it off, lifted the rock, and brought it down over the lock. The rusted piece of metal broke from its shank. Pleased he’d broken it in a single blow, Pierce tossed the padlock aside and slid the chain off. The blasted ol’ hinges squealed woefully, hurting his ears as he pushed his way in.

  “Do you want to stay out here?” he offered Taisia.

  She stepped forward. “No. The departed do not frighten me.”

  Pierce smiled widely as she walked by. He left the door partly ajar to allow the grey light into the musty building. Nothing much was there other than the aboveground vault and a candelabrum atop the flat tomb lid.

  “Convenient,” Pierce noted, finding a box of matches next to the candles.

  He struck a match and lit the three candlewicks while Taisia shut the door all the way.

  “It appears someone has been here recently,” he observed.

  “Grave robbers?” she surmised, studying the scratch marks under the tomb lid where it had been previously pried up.

  “No. The lock outside was intact. I think all this was left by my uncle, François, or somebody he hired, to hide the clue.”

  Taisia stepped around the tomb and picked something up. It scraped metallically over the stone ground.

  “I would say so,” she said, holding up a crowbar. “Der’mo.”

  “What?” he demanded, sensing the hostility in her tone.

  “I had hoped we would not have to open the grave.”

  “Aye, me, too, love.” He glanced down at the vault with a tut. “Even I have never grave-robbed before. Nasty business.”

  Pierce took the crowbar from her and worked to wedge it under the middle of the tomb lid. He wished he could push the slab off, but an added edge on the bottom kept the blasted thing in place unless lifted. The thick stone lid wasn’t the heaviest thing Pierce had ever hoisted, but it put a strain on his muscles, nonetheless. The moment he raised it up enough, Taisia lifted the top end farther and was able to push the whole thing sideways. Pierce set the crowbar down and helped slide the lid aside until it rested across the tomb. Taisia picked up the candelabrum and held it aloft over the pine box inside.

  “Do you see a clue anywhere?” Pierce inquired hopefully as she checked.

  “No. It must be in the coffin.”

  Pierce bowed his head with a crestfallen groan. “Bugger.” He raised his chin and shrugged with a deep sigh. “Right, then.”

  Without giving it too much thought, he slid the coffin lid aside. Taisia helped him get it out and place it carefully beside the tomb. Both held their breaths. When Pierce allowed air back into his lungs, the old musk of death entered his inner passageways. Pierce had seen his fair share of corpses, but never the decayed remains of a relative.

  Denis R. Joubert’s skeletal remains lay peacefully in their final resting place, dressed in a ratty suit that dated back to the mid-1700s, his bony hands folded over his waistcoat. The bones were grey and completely naked of the flesh that once clothed them. Pierce took off his top hat and set it upon the tomb lid.

  “I’m not seeing anything,” Taisia admitted, panning the light around.

  Pierce pinched the dead man’s shirt cuff and lifted the arm a tad to check under it.

  “You don’t suppose it is inside the skull, do you?” Taisia wondered, drawing the flames to the empty eye sockets.

  “It’s definitely hidden where a grave robber wouldn’t discover it,” Pierce said, and then thought a moment. “Shite. It might be underneath him.”

  The expression on her face was a miserable one.

  Pierce held up his hand. “I’ll check.”

  The fact that he was about to search beneath a dead body, even one as long decomposed as this one, made his skin crawl. He closed his eyes and slowly breathed out the stale air, trying to prepare himself mentally for the task. Pierce rolled up his jacket and shirtsleeve and gradually slid his hand beneath the body. The bottom of Grandfather Joubert was nearly all bones. The clothing had all but rotted away under the weight of escaping bodily fluids that had oozed from the decaying corpse during decomposition. Pierce did his best to hold down his breakfast. He searched until he could no longer take it.

  “Right,” he said, yanking his hand out.

  “Find anything?”

  “Maybe.”

  He grasped the body by the shoulder and gently turned it over a little. Pierce leaned in close just as the skull cracked off the spinal cord and fell off. Both of them let out a shout and leaped back.

  “Fuckin’ hell,” Pierce said, raking his shaky fingers through his hair.

  Taisia held a hand over her mouth, laughing uncontrollably. It made him chuckle, too. The levity helped brighten the morbid moment. He checked under again, but found nothing.

  “Bloody hell,” Pierce groaned. “Where is the damn thing?”

  They pondered in dead silence until a faint ticking sound caught his attention. “You hear that?”

  Taisia looked at him strangely. “Hear what?”

  Pierce listened more intently. He clearly heard it and drew his ear closer toward the dead man.

  “What are you doing?” Taisia asked.

  After listening to the skeleton’s sternum, Pierce rose to his full height and announced, “This stiff has a ticker.”

  “A what?”

  “Don’t you hear it?” Pierce asked, unbuttoning the vest.

  Taisia listened. “I hear nothing. Your hearing must be better than mine.”

  He spread out the vest and shirt. “Either that or I’ve gone completely batty.”

  “Well, you do look crazy undressing a corpse.”

  “Aye. I bet I do. Bring the light over?”

  She drew the candles in closer, and the shadows gave way to the firelight. Pierce looked for the source of the ticking.

  “There!” Taisia said, pointing to something under the upper rib bones. “See it?”

  Pierce did, and again, rolled up his jacket and shirtsleeve. “Right.” He took a breath. “I can do this.”

  He reached under the entire ribcage, doing his best not to disturb the skeleton any more than they already had. When his fingers touched the object, he couldn’t have been happier.

  “Got it,” he announced, bringing it out.

  Taisia came around to stand next to him “What is it?”

  “A heart,” he answered, looking at the object that took up nearly his entire palm.

  It was a heart-shaped mechanical ornament made from brass and of moveable gears with a clock set in the center, the second-hand ticking quickly over the clock’s face.

  “Erm,” Pierce wondered aloud. “What are we s’posed to do with this?”

  “Let me see it,” Taisia offered, giving him the candelabrum.

  She examined the clock-heart a moment before finding a tiny button on its side. She pressed it and the heart opened a tad.

  “It’s a box,” she said, spreading it apart like a clamshell.

  Inside was a folded-up envelope.

  Pierce sighed happily. “S’pose that’s it, then, eh?”

  “Wait,” said Taisia, picking up a paper resting on top of the envelope. “This says to bring the watch.”

  Behind the box lid, there was a two-inch steel cylinder part peeking out behind the watch. It appeared awkward. Taisia pushed on the bottom of the tube, sliding it and the watch it was attached to, up through a rou
ghly carved-out hole in the heart itself. When it came up far enough, she pulled it free and held it.

  Pierce pointed to the ticking timepiece fastened on top of the cylinder. “Only the watch?”

  “It seems so.” She studied the clock. “I wonder why we need to bring it.”

  “Dunno. We’ll figure it out later, eh?”

  He was anxious to get out of the mausoleum.

  He reset the skull, straightened the clothing, and folded the hands back over the torso. They returned both the coffin and tomb lid to their rightful place and left the heart-shaped box upon the tomb for any grave robber to have. Pierce gave her the envelope and hurried over to the fountain to wash his hands.

  “That water looks more diseased than the body in there,” Taisia remarked, walking up to him.

  “Don’t care,” he grunted, scrubbing them in the slimy liquid.

  “Do you want me to read the clue?”

  “Please,” he said, shaking the water off before blotting his hands on his plaid trousers.

  She flipped the top fold of the envelope up. “It appears someone has already opened it,” she speculated, noting the broken seal. She brought out two pieces of paper. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “This is a note from your uncle to your mother. I can’t read this.”

  “Why? Can’t you read French?”

  “I can, but this is a family matter. It isn’t my place.”

  “So?” Pierce challenged. “From what my folks have told me, they consider you their daughter.”

  Her cheeks reddened.

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  She returned her focus to the letter. “‘Dear Sister, I understand your confusion. I have led you to a man who you believe is our father.’”

  Pierce’s face scrunched up. “Say what, now?”

  “‘Before our mother died, she confessed to me that Denis was not your father. Forgive me, Nona. I have known about this for years, and now that my days are closing in on me, I feel it is time I keep my promise and tell you the truth.’”

  Pierce was taken aback by the news.

  “Could it be?” he uttered softly.

  “Nona has a different father?”